I have noted offlate, there has been a lot of interest with marketers talking about the need to build online communities and getting closer to their customers online. There has been a lot of action around this, where brands have built programs or websites or built sponsored content within a group on the web to make this happen. I have often wondered how will all this work for brands. Some of the questions, I have always had are:
- When brands enable specific online spaces for consumers to meet and spend time, what is the desired impact that the brands hope to achieve and what will be results or ROMI(Return on Marketing Investment) of such an initiative?
- Do marketers believe that consumers will find their best network of friends/ interest group in a specific branded online space and is that the best place to meet and share ?
- Consumers are interested in hobbies, interests - like music, food, beauty, friends, dating etc. Why will they align themselves to specific brand related community sites?
- How many such branded online spaces as a consumer will they become a member of? It's crazy given the amount of brands one consumes and interests that one has! Also, take into context millions of things they would like to do on the web.
- What's the motivation for repeat visits for such spaces and how does one keep the interest alive?
For example, closer home in India, we have sunsilkgangofgirls promoted by Unilever. I registered into this website and went into different gangs(groups) to seek answers to my questions. I was really not suprised to see very few members in different gangs - Uptown Club, famous 5, sushmitateam had just one or two members while there were several such hundreds of gangs that have been started or registered. While there are a lot of activities and content in this site, engaging the gangs with all of this is the key task and challenge, I presume.
In this context, I came across a very interesting point of view by Chloe Stromberg of Forrester on how marketers need to understand the difference between community and network as it is often misused.
I hear marketers using the words "community" and "network" interchangeably.
But a community is just one type of network. My working definition of network is: a group of people who have something in common and who have a motivation for connecting. For example, a bunch of people who all buy the same brand of toilet paper, but have no desire to meet, are not a network.
It's easy to recognize different types of connected groups offline. But as marketers wade into the less familiar universe of social computing, a lot of people assume that any type of online network associated with their brand is an online community.
What other types of online networks are there?
- Emotive networks (e.g., CarePages, PreludeDriver.com) -- Commonality: a powerful emotional experience, like being diagnosed with an illness or loving a particular type of car. Motivation to connect: find people to share your experience with.
- Advice networks (e.g., Berkeley Parents Network, del.icio.us) -- Commonality: you're trying to do an activity like parenting in the Bay Area, learning about emerging technologies. Motivation to connect: get suggestions from someone whose perspective you value.
- Dating networks (e.g., Match.com, Yahoo! Personals) -- Commonality: you're single, maybe you share similar social values. Motivation to connect: meet a sweetheart (not a community).
- Blog networks (e.g., Micropersuasion, Greg Mankiw's Blog) -- Commonality: the ideas that you're interested in. Motivation to connect: affect the public dialogue about the ideas.
- Wiki networks (e.g., Wikipedia, CarGurus) -- Commonality: you want the unvarnished, comprehensive truth to be free and available. Motivation to connect: get the whole picture.
- Linkedin -- Commonality: you want to leverage business relationships. Motivation to connect: get a sales/deal contact, recruit someone, find a job.
- Facebook -- Facebook is a tool, not a network, although that may be changing. Existing offline networks use Facebook to socialize. Commonality: having gone to the same college. Motivation to connect: Socialize or build relationships with people of social standing. (I'm going to dodge the class bullet on this one -- Dana Boyd has kicked off the discussion here:http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html)
- Myspace -- There is a strong commercial dimension to the networks forming on Myspace. Commonality: anything. Motivation to connect: be found by anyone, share. This open-door, hello-world atmosphere is especially conducive to small biz commercial activity (e.g., if I'm an unsigned band, I want anyone anywhere in the world to find me, buy my music, and come to a show).
It is important for marketers to understand the 'motivation to connect' as they go about building their 'network of customers' for their brands online.